Misconceptions QI

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Gooood evening,

good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening,

good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening...

and welcome to QI -

where, tonight, we're mired in Misconceptions

and nothing is as it seems.

Or is it? Or will they? Have they?

I don't know. LAUGHTER

Do you? Maybe not. I simply don't know.

Or do I? LAUGHTER

Joining me tonight are...

Sue Perkins.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..Chris Addison...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..Sara Cox...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..and Alan Davies.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-Thank you, thank you.

So, let's hear your buzzers.

Sue goes...

BUZZER

-Oh!

-Chris goes... IDENTICAL BUZZER

Sara goes... IDENTICAL BUZZER

Alan's buzzer...

BIRD SCREECHES

LAUGHTER

Oh. KLAXON

LAUGHTER

That wasn't a buzzer, that was a buzzard.

-That's harsh, though, isn't it?

-It is harsh.

Am I on minus then already,

-before I've spoken?

-Yes.

That is a new record.

LAUGHTER

I have no... My hands are tied.

LAUGHTER

Now, how did the first American airmail arrive at its destination?

Human cannonball.

LAUGHTER That's a good thought.

They just put a postman in a cannon and fired him.

Was it an air balloon?

It wasn't, I'm afraid. KLAXON

-I mean...

-Ha-ha-ha!

-..that seems...

LAUGHTER

Welcome to QI. Quite right.

Oh, surely a carrier pigeon.

-Oh!

-As in...

KLAXON

Was it by bus?

Closer.

-Bus is closer. Airmail was by bus?

-Stagecoach?

-Train.

-Sedan chair.

-Train is the right answer.

-Sedan chair.

You deserve to get some points back, because it started by balloon,

-you see, Sara.

-Oh, really?

-Yeah.

With great hoopla, they started an airmail service.

It was going to go from Indiana to New York.

Unfortunately, they chose the opening day

and lots of mail had arrived, which was very self-consciously excited.

"My darling, you're going to get this by a new means of transport,"

etc, etc. They were all thrilled by it.

There was no wind and, after five hours, it had gone 30 miles...

-LAUGHTER ..and so he just...

-Could he...?

Basically, they let themselves down and got on a train.

Throwing the post overboard to keep height.

LAUGHTER

He was a piano maker turned ballooning pioneer,

Professor John Wise, who started it out.

It was in 1859.

But the regular airmail service was started in 1918

as a way of training pilots -

and the assistant postmaster was ruthless,

and he insisted that the trainees

would fly, whatever the weather.

And out of 40 who started,

-more than half were killed.

-Oh, f...!

-Oh, dear.

He was a lunatic. He, himself, didn't fly -

so it was pretty obvious he had no idea what was going on,

so it was all rather tragic.

Good to see the use of a sinister doll on the mailbag as well.

LAUGHTER

-The whole thing's sent by voodoo.

-Yeah, it is.

LAUGHTER

It's for when they don't want to get in the plane,

-he makes them with the doll.

-LAUGHTER

He walks the doll.

"I don't want to fly in the plane!"

The first airplane-powered glider airmail service

was founded by whom?

-Amy Johnson.

-The first one was named after...

-No, she's not known as an aviatrix...

-Oh, right.

..she's known as a novelist.

-Madonna.

-Barbara Cartland.

Is the right answer!

APPLAUSE

INAUDIBLE

That was very impressive, Sue.

Barbara Cartland flew the first glider that dispensed mail?

-Yep, that's absolutely right.

-Tell me it was painted pink.

The glider was called The Barbara Cartland, as you can see. Yeah.

-Where does she get her ideas?

-Indeed.

Well, she was a flapper, she was a sort of deb.

She was very much an aristocrat,

part of the Bright Young Things - and they all loved to fly.

-It was an expression of youth.

-"Oh, because it was extremely good fun!

"I mean, just really, really good to get in a glider

"and just shove a few letters out.

"Lovely, rollicking, good fun."

America's first airmail letters arrived by train.

Now, from airmail to e-mail.

What's the most effective way to do a massive data dump?

-Is it...?

-LAUGHTER

Is it - "Give your laptop to a British civil servant

"to leave in a car?"

LAUGHTER Yes, that will happen.

-A data dump?

-Yeah.

I'm sorry about the picture,

it's nothing to do with anything lavatorial.

-Where have you got that from?

-I've no idea.

They just googled "data dump", and there you are.

-Yeah.

-The techno turd.

-LAUGHTER

No, don't... Forget that whole side of it. We...

-No, I'm obsessed with that image.

-It's our fault.

Our picture suggests the lavatory, but it's not about that.

If you want to transfer HUGE amounts of data,

-what's the best way to do it?

-Dropbox.

-Dropbox, yeah.

Dropbox. You send it... KLAXON

Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

Do you...? By data dump, do you mean to get the data somewhere else,

-or do you mean to...?

-To wipe it?

-Yeah, exactly.

-Oh sorry, the "wipe it" again, I mean...

-No, not to wipe it.

LAUGHTER

But you always want to wipe after a data dump.

I'll give you an example.

Enormous data sets that come from Hubble

have to be transferred to different scientists,

to interpret and to render the images

and all these kind of... And they're huge data sets.

So, what do they use to send it? Do they use Ethernet?

Do they use...? What do they use? Fibre optics?

Do they just print it off?

-No, that's...

-Do they put it in the Cloud?

-They don't put it...

They run to a phone booth. They do all that, like in the old films.

"I've got all the data. OK, have you got a pen? Listen."

LAUGHTER

"OK, first thing - a star, then a bit a space, then another star..."

-LAUGHTER

-..and do that for some time.

What they do is they post it...

in the mail, the ordinary mail.

-It's quicker.

-Bradley Wiggins delivers it.

-It's quicker.

It takes less than 24 hours for each transfer

if you take it by mail.

Whereas, to transfer the complete data set,

which is 120 terabytes,

it would take 111 days...

-if you did it by the internet.

-To send?

-You know, by e-mail.

-Yeah.

That is surprising, isn't it?

And we've done some calculations.

FedEx or UPS, or any of those,

could deliver massive amounts of information

64 times faster than the internet.

Based on the weight of packages which ship every day...

They're going to love you!

-I hope you're getting money from them for this!

-No, it's just...

I didn't... Oh, from FedEx.

It all ends up on an island with Tom Hanks...

"Faster than the internet." - Stephen Fry.

..for three years.

Based on the weight of packages and the weight of memory cards,

they could transport 2,222 terabytes per second.

Now that... The whole internet, in 2016,

is expected to be 34.5 terabytes a second.

What's a terabyte, Stephen?

-Well, you've got a byte...

-Yes.

-A byte.

..a kilobyte...

And then the terror-byte!

-..a megabyte...

-Megabyte.

-Yeah. Megabyte I can do, yeah.

-Yeah, a megabyte. ..and then a gigabyte...

-Yeah.

..and a terabyte...

..and then you have a petabyte, even bigger than that. Petabyte.

But the expansion of memory,

the expansion of processing power in computing is bewildering -

partly because it doubles every two years,

and do you know what that is called?

It was predicted in the '60s that it would double.

-A gobble, a gobble, a double gobble.

-No, there was a man who predicted

-Oh, right.

-..that it would double every two years.

His name was Gordon Moore and it's called Moore's Law,

-and Moore's Law...

-Oh, that's good.

-That worked out well, didn't it?

-Yeah.

Moore's Law has governed the astonishing rise in power

and capacity in computing ever since.

For a long, long time. It doubles and doubles and doubles.

To give you an example of how breathtaking and bewildering it is,

we've got some memory capacity here.

Here... This is from the '60s

and it's rather elegant in its own little way.

And it would have fitted into some sort of great, big cabinet

that was part of a computing system.

It's called the Univac 1004.

And it's a core store memory module.

And how much memory do you think that contains?

A byte.

No, it's a lot more than that.

-A gigabyte.

-A gigabyte.

Oh, no, it's nothing like as big as that.

LAUGHTER

-It's one kilobyte.

-A kilobyte?!

-Yeah.

-There's a kilobyte, too.

-What's a kilobyte?

-I don't remember.

1,000 bytes.

And look. I've got here, this -

which is 128 gigabytes.

Can you see it? I'll put it there, it's a little...

micro SD chip.

And this, here,

would have to weigh 140,229 metric tonnes...

to carry this much information. LAUGHTER

-In 1963.

-Yeah.

-That is hugely impractical.

It's... Exactly.

Just under six-and-a-half Ark Royal aircraft carriers...

-I'd need an extension done.

-LAUGHTER

..if this was what you were using.

And it just shows, this is an example of Moore's Law -

you go from that to that.

Or maybe this.

Ah! There we are.

-Look at that. Isn't that beautiful?

-It is.

It is a splendid piece of work, isn't it?

-That's the middle of C-3PO.

-LAUGHTER

It's the Elliott 803 core store memory module.

It was made in the early '60s, also,

-and it weighs seven kilograms...

-Wow.

..and stores 20 kilobytes.

LAUGHTER Wow!

-Yeah.

-How about that?

-My favourite one...

-Supercomputers.

..is the Bryant Model-2 Series hard disk platter.

-Mine too.

-Yeah.

I love that. I've got all of them.

I have a poster. Did you have the poster?

-Yeah, absolutely. I was obsessed.

-I love it. I was in the club.

-I had the...

-GASPS AND LAUGHTER

-There it is.

-No!

THAT is a hard disk.

Isn't that good?

-It's a disk...

-That's ludicrous!

HE KNOCKS ON DISK ..and it's hard.

LAUGHTER

It's very rare for technology to double as S&M equipment, isn't it?

LAUGHTER I think it's absolutely blissful.

You look like a Borrower playing with a CD.

I'm going to put that down again...

Oh! ..because it's so heavy. Oh!

It's made of magnesium alloy of some kind.

-Careful, you'll scratch it.

-LAUGHTER

Yeah, I don't want to scratch it.

It carried eight megabytes,

so that was pretty impressive.

-What's a megabyte?

-And its drive... LAUGHTER

Can't remember.

The drive that operated the Bryant Model-2 Series hard disk platter,

the brochure boasted its short warm-up time.

Which was?

15 minutes.

-LAUGHTER

-Oh.

Well, listen, I ought to say that we are extremely grateful

to the National Museum of Computing, who lent us these fabulous items.

If you want a really great day out, you could do a lot worse than visit

the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley -

where, of course, Enigma was cracked

-and it's the home of British engineering in that regard.

-Yeah.

Now then, for a question about mistakes,

what's the real cost of parachute jumping?

A shattered pelvis?

It can be.

Why do most people jump off planes?

-For charity.

-Charity.

-For charity.

Well...

Which is good, don't get me wrong. LAUGHTER

Can I just say, it's only in that situation,

falling out of a plane, that my hair makes sense.

LAUGHTER

I've been looking for a context for this for years.

-It does, doesn't it?

-Now, finally.

-Whoosh.

Stephen appears quite frightened at the back there.

-Well, I am...

-Are you on fire?

..because I probably know about the 1999 Perth Royal Infirmary study -

which is most unfortunate.

They looked at five years of charity jumps

and found they resulted in injuries to 174 people, right?

-Which cost the National Health Service...

-Oh, no.

over £600,000.

How much had they raised?

The average amount raised per person for charity was £30.

So, every pound raised

cost the NHS roughly £13.75.

Oh, that is so depressing, though.

And, of course, about 70% of the jumps

were raising money for NHS-related causes.

-LAUGHTER

-Oh, no. That is amazing.

It is amazing, isn't it?

The thing is, when you think about it, don't do something

that is likely to injure yourself, if that's your game.

"I'm having a sponsored catch-the-measles."

LAUGHTER

-Sponsored...

-For Measles Relief.

-Yeah, for Measles relief.

Sponsored spread cholera.

-Bring typhus back....for charity.

-LAUGHTER

It is... Well, a lot of...

I think if you've jumped out of a plane, you should pay.

-Well, yes.

-But don't they pay?

-"How did you do it?"

"I jumped out of a plane." "Oh, well, I'm sorry, but..."

A lot of them are first-time jumpers, of course,

and what happens is, very often,

when the ground rushes up to meet you,

you forget everything you've been taught

and so all the bad things you've been told could happen, happen.

And you need longer training,

not necessarily on the details of how to roll and drop -

but on how to prepare your mind so that you don't panic.

-That's the key.

-Is that a thing that they do in the paras then?

So before they go behind enemy lines, are they there going,

-"Hmm..."?

-LAUGHTER

"Just don't drop us yet, I'm not quite there."

LAUGHTER Maybe. Maybe.

I mean the fact is, it's a dangerous thing to do.

And in the days of, you know, those great commando parachute drops,

they're unlikely to survive more than three.

Well, but then there were people shooting at you then -

which might actually make them more fun, these charity drops.

Certainly add a bit of spice.

Well, there was a dog called Rob, in 1945,

and this was in Africa and Italy, in the campaign there, and he...

Apparently, he did 20 drops, and he won...

For the RSPCA!

He won the... LAUGHTER

-Yes, quite!

-Fundraising.

He won the Dickin Medal, which is the VC for animals.

They just open the door of the plane, throw a bone out

and off he goes.

But it wasn't until 2006 that it was revealed

that his heroism was a hoax.

-What?

-Oh.

-For morale?

Well, not quite, actually. Well, sort of morale, in a way.

It was that the couple from Shropshire,

who had given the dog to the regiment, said,

"Can we have him back, please?"

And the regiment were so fond of him,

they made-up all these things to show that he was indispensable.

"He's a heroic dog, you will not believe what he can do."

And so they went, "Oh, all right then, you'd better keep him,

"I suppose. He's valuable for the war effort."

-But he wasn't at all, he was just a mascot.

-Brilliant.

They just liked him.

Sending them pictures of him chewing Hitler's legs.

LAUGHTER Yes, that's right.

After World War II, in America, they used surplus parachutes

to help repopulate beavers into the wild.

The idea was they'd shove them in a box.

They first thought, "We'll shove them in a box and they'll fall

"and then they'll gnaw their way out of the box."

-Then they worried...

-This doesn't sound like sexy times to me.

Just shove them in a box. They'll pull through.

They worried that they'd eat through the box

-while they were still in the air.

-They chucked them out of a plane?

-Yeah.

-To repopulate...

-Yeah. LAUGHTER

There are huge areas of wilderness.

-It's incredibly hard to...

-Yes, it makes total sense.

..give them their own territory.

Couldn't they have driven them there, Stephen?

-They could have driven them there.

-No... Wilderness.

Huge areas of wilderness. They're bigger than countries.

-They're bigger than England, these...

-What, beavers?!

No, the parks! The parks. LAUGHTER

"Bring me some massive beavers!"

-The parks in which you wished to drop them.

-OK.

And you want to sort of get them disposed evenly around.

-Why had they been dying out?

-Oh, gosh.

-People had been throwing them out of planes.

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

As you fall out, you gnaw your way out of your crate and go,

"Oh, thanks a lot!"

-"Well, this is the middle of...

-HE MOUTHS

-..nowhere."

LAUGHTER

"I've got to go all the way back to Ottawa."

Until another beaver lands on your head at high velocity.

LAUGHTER

The rest of the wildlife...

The moose around there,

"What is going on?!"

Beavers coming out of the sky.

"My God! It's actually happening!"

"It's raining beavers."

Part of the moose religious texts is that that's...

LAUGHTER

That's a sign of the rapture is when the beavers start dropping.

Well, they had tried moving them

into new territories for them by mule

and they just simply got too hot and they really didn't like it at all.

-They put a beaver on horseback, essentially?

-Yeah.

Well, you've got to transport it somehow.

-What...? How would you transport it?

-Well, I...

But I don't understand why the beavers...

-I don't understand any of this.

-LAUGHTER

They thought, "We can't..."

"OK, there's no way we can drop them into a park,

"other than from the sky."

Or by mule, which you found also incomprehensible.

Is there a man with...?

Or a lady with a beaver on horseback?

Or is it just a beaver on horseback?

LAUGHTER

Of course there's a person.

I'm confused.

So, is it one beaver per mule?

LAUGHTER

Because then they're repopulating the place with mules,

-as far as I can work it out.

-LAUGHTER

Yeah, the beavers didn't want to stay.

The mules have forced the beavers further along...

They were relying on the mule to find its way back.

LAUGHTER

More complicated than you think, this beaver transportation thing.

Yeah, it is.

Well, that was harder work than I expected.

LAUGHTER

Now, we're off to the match and it's penalty time.

For the best chance of success, where should you aim?

At the ball.

LAUGHTER

-And then into the goal.

-Wahey!

I'm so bad at sport, my inclination would be to...

I know where I'd hit it,

so I would then just reverse my natural inclination.

That would probably be the best.

-So, a bit of game theory going on, on yourself?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-See, I'd go top right,

which means that probably the best way would be bottom left...

KLAXON

Yeah, top corner either way is not the best.

Is it "at the goalie?"

Yes.

-Because he's going to jump...

-Yeah, because he's going to...

-He's going to go.

-Because the goalkeeper nearly always

-goes one way or the other.

-So you hit it straight down the middle?

Straight down the middle is, far and away,

the most statistical likely way of doing it.

But it's odd, because footballers know this...

because it's been, you know, obviously well gone over...

and yet footballers don't.

Is it because they just think they'd look so stupid

-if they kicked it right at the keeper...

-Yes!

..and the keeper just caught it?

If the one or two times out of 100,

the goalkeeper does actually stay in the middle

and the ball goes and hits him,

the crowd would just boo their heads off

and think that the penalty taker is the biggest idiot in the world.

Although, statistically, he was doing exactly the right thing.

So, they'd rather not look a fool. You're absolutely right.

Because it's seen as 50/50.

If the goalie goes the correct way and saves it,

-it's still seen as all right, isn't it?

-Yes.

In fact, it's 57% in one direction,

41% in the other.

-Do you know which that might be?

-Left. Left-right.

-Left?

-It's 57% left, yes.

-Because you...

-They go left more often.

-..use your right foot.

And 2% in the middle.

Three countries have an absolute

0% success record in penalty shoot-outs.

They played two and lost two.

-San Marino?

-No, it's Gabon...

-Micronesia.

-..Romania and Chile.

But there's one country that's taken part in more than two

and has the worst record of all in the world, apart from those three...

-Is it England?

-..and it's England.

-Yeah.

-AUDIENCE GROANS

-Why is that?

-What a surprise(!)

We've only ever won one.

We've won one out of eight.

12.5% success rate - as opposed to Germany, who've won 83% of theirs.

Why is that then?

Because, presumably, all teams have access to that

very simple statistical information.

Is it just the fact that it's now embedded in the psyche?

-FAUX GERMAN ACCENT:

-"You are weak, mentally weak."

LAUGHTER

-Do you think hypnotism would help?

-Probably.

-Of the keeper.

-Of the keeper, yeah.

-LAUGHTER

-Of the keeper, like...

-LAUGHTER

I think if it was me, I'd stand by one post, feigning indifference...

-Having a fag.

-..and, as they run up to take it,

-I would sprint to the other post...

-LAUGHTER

..surely distracting him

and, if he did go that way, it would hit me on the way past.

LAUGHTER

That would do it.

Yep, that's the plain truth.

To be successful in penalty shoot-outs,

either go straight down the middle or be German.

LAUGHTER

Do an impression of the world's first mime.

"Come back! I'm not supposed to be saying anything. Come back!"

-Is it the one where you do...?

-Oh.

They do the... Is it that one?

KLAXON Oh, they're all doing it.

You're all doing activities.

Where does the word "mime" come from, do you imagine?

-"Twat in white gloves?"

-Mimic?

-LAUGHTER

Mimic, the same root as the word mimic.

You see...

-Mimesis.

-Yeah.

-Greek word meaning... Yes, imitation.

-Imitation, yeah.

It was acting,

it was full-on acting.

Speech and movement and everything else.

The world's first mime was a fellow called Sophron,

who was much admired by Plato, amongst others.

His audience don't seem to like him very much.

Well, no, that's... LAUGHTER

-They're punching him.

-No, I think...

They're recreating that night after Top Gear.

LAUGHTER

Very good. APPLAUSE

In Rome, mimes were pretty amazing.

Women took the female parts, which is just...

-Scandalous!

-Yeah.

LAUGHTER

Performers did not wear masks or formal acting shoes.

LAUGHTER

Oh! Forfend!

"My formal acting shoes."

"What kind of formal acting shoes would you wear?"

The object... Now you'll like this, Alan.

The object was to get laughs, no matter how obscene...

LAUGHTER ..the jokes had to be.

They all had a character called the "stupidus," or fool, who was some...

-Who's actually the cleverest one of them all.

-Yes. Now, exactly.

LAUGHTER

Sometimes they featured adultery live on stage.

Wahey!

-Or a little bit less, less...

-Gets better by the minute!

Less amusingly,

live executions with actors replaced by condemned criminals.

-Were they wearing the right shoes?

-Yes.

The church excommunicated all mimes in the fifth century AD.

Not a moment too soon.

-Why?

-I guess, because they were pleasurable and...

It's not why, it's...

-It's hard because you can't scream.

-LAUGHTER

Anyway, if you want something, what's the magic word?

"Darling..."

LAUGHTER

"Please."

KLAXON

LAUGHTER

This is something that's been researched.

There is a particular word.

Let's suppose that you queue-barge.

Now, in general, if you queue-barge apologetically and charmingly,

60% of people will let you in without too much complaint -

this was done for a queue to a photocopier -

but if you used this one word in your sentence,

you would get 95% of people letting you in quite happily.

-Smallpox?

-LAUGHTER

-Letting you in...

-"I've got the smallpox. Can I get in?"

Letting you in, not abandoning the queue.

-It's a good thought though.

-It's probably better though.

-"Unclean, unclean."

-What do you say?

Do you say, "Room for a small one?"

You say, "I like your blouse. Can I come in?"

LAUGHTER It's one word.

"Because."

"Because." "Yeah, because I've got some photocopying to do."

And it's obvious you've got photocopying to do,

you've gone to the front of the photocopying queue,

-but just saying "because" is the magic word.

-You can't...

It unlocks people's objection. "Because I'm in a hurry."

"Do you mind? Because I'm in a hurry."

Can you turn to someone and go, "Because!"

LAUGHTER Maybe.

# Because, because, because, because... #

Obviously there are...

There are variables in terms of attitude and niceness.

# I'm off to see the wizard... #

"Because!"

"All right, go in front, Christ!"

LAUGHTER

-He's going to do the whole musical.

-You're ever so silly. Oh, dear.

# The wonderful Wizard of Oz... # "All right, go in front of me!"

Well, I can illustrate the answer, actually,

because - say it's a magical word here, this is...

-You know I like to do little magical moments...

-I know.

..because it's the M series here -

and we've got, as you can see, MAGICAL.

So, what we do is, we take all the letters from MAGICAL...

As you can see, I hope.

..and we shuffle them about.

-I'll have one from the bottom, please.

-Well...

Or from anywhere else, please, Carol.

What I'll do is, I'll give you... I'll give you the numbers,

so you can call out where you want the letter to go.

-Do you see?

-OK. Yes, sir.

So I'll pick a letter up and you decide where it goes, all right.

-Three.

-Three?

One, two, three, isn't it? There. Yeah.

-Smooth.

-Seven.

Seven? All right. This will go in seven.

-Are you sure seven?

-Five.

-All right, OK.

-Five.

One, two, three, four, five. Yeah.

-One.

-One, oh...

-This is what happens when you do these things.

-Four.

Four? Oh, God, you had to do that, didn't you?

-Yeah?

-Two.

-Two.

Two? All right, all right, all right.

And what are the chances? What are the chances?

What are the chances?!

APPLAUSE

The laws of physics absolutely defied on this programme.

It's frightening. LAUGHTER

Now - since this whole show has been about Misconceptions -

this week, we've replaced General Ignorance

with a test of your M-themed general knowledge.

There are lots and lots of points to be won in this quickfire round,

so fingers on buzzers.

What's the capital of Mexico? BUZZARD

-Mexico City.

-Is the right answer.

Very good. Name the deepest part of the ocean?

-BUZZARD Yes?

-The Mariana...

Marianas Trench or something?

The Mariana Trench is the right answer.

If something is genuine, it's the real...?

-BUZZER

-McCoy.

Oh. KLAXON

LAUGHTER

No, the original phrase is McKay.

That's 42 years older than the phrase - "the real McCoy."

It's from G McKay, the Scottish distillers.

There you are.

FAUX SCOTTISH ACCENT: "A drappie o' the real McKay."

So, what city can be found on the Moscow River?

-BUZZER Yes?

-Moscow.

Is the right answer!

What's the name of Cameron Mackintosh's

Abba-themed London Musical?

-BUZZARD Yes?

-Mamma Mia.

BUZZER Mamma Mia? Oh, Alan!

KLAXON

No, indeed. BUZZER

Mamma Mia was produced by Judy Craymer -

but, before that, a musical called Abbacadabra,

produced by Cameron Mackintosh,

-staged at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1983.

-Oh!

-Yeah.

So, who created Miss Marple?

BUZZER Yes?

-Agatha Christie.

-Of course.

-You see, nothing to be frightened of.

-I'm scared now.

LAUGHTER That's the point...

-I'm really scared.

-..we want you scared.

Agatha Christie, of course, created Miss Marple.

What's the gambling capital of the world?

-BUZZER Yes?

-Las Vegas.

Oh! KLAXON

-Oh, that was really unlucky.

-I don't know.

-Is it Croydon?

-Dubai?

-"Croydon." LAUGHTER

It's seven times bigger than Las Vegas.

-BUZZER

-It's Hong Kong.

-No. You're in the right area.

-The other one.

-What's our themed letter?

-M. M...

-AUDIENCE CALL OUT:

-Macau.

Audience gets the points. BUZZER

APPLAUSE

-I guessed on your behalf.

-It's Macau.

-Macau.

-Is it really?

-Yes.

-Where's your sheep, though? Hey!

-It's Ma-cow.

-Here's me cow.

LAUGHTER

-Very, very, very, very...

-Me cow.

..very amusing!

LAUGHTER

Macau is the gambling capital of the world.

Where's your cow?

Your last chance for lots of points is a picture round.

Please draw a picture of a juvenile fruit fly brain.

A juvenile fruit fly brain?

Yes, indeed.

All right.

I'll wager...

that it doesn't have one.

LAUGHTER

I'm going to do it...

So, we've already got...

We've got there, from Chris' juvenile fruit fly brain

-to scale.

-I've done a banana. What have you drawn?

You've got a strawberry.

Well, the shattering news for you, Alan -

and it really is disappointing -

is that, for once, what you usually draw could have worked.

-What, it's like...

-It's a cock and balls!

-..a cock and balls?

-No!

-Yes! LAUGHTER

There they are.

WHISTLING

You see, the one time you didn't.

The one time you behaved. Oh, you did?

-Before the show.

-Before the show.

Before the show? I see.

We got the cock and balls out of our system before the show.

-LAUGHTER

-We got that out of the way.

First thing you do when you arrive. Do the cock and balls.

Do the cock and balls, then you won't make a fool of yourself

by drawing a cock and balls on the programme.

Well, on that cock-shell, let's take a look at...

LAUGHTER

Let's take a look at the scores.

It's pretty exciting, because we have a clear winner,

on a staggering...

plus - and minus - zero,

is Chris Addison. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

How?

In second place...

with a highly impressive minus six,

Sue Perkins. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Usually this would be good enough to win the wooden spoon, Sara,

it's a brilliant first appearance to get minus 13...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..but it takes an old hand to do really, really badly at this game,

-Alan Davies on minus 54!

-54?!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

So it's thank you from Sara, Chris, Sue, Alan and me.

And I leave you with this from Charlie Brown.

"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?'

"Then a voice says to me,

" 'This is going to take more than one night.' "

LAUGHTER Goodnight.

APPLAUSE